Thursday 28th January 2010

Lots of news in the last few days. The best one is that Helen was delightful, cheerful, oriented company today! Her sore eye has settled down. The upshot of the family meeting is that she will be discharged back to the flat at Dorelle (Dorchester St South Brisbane) on Monday and we will see how it goes. The OT, Discharge Planner and Palliative Care Nurse and I all met on Wednesday and then each of them also caught up with Helen independently and then she went off for another chemo treatment. The meeting was ok - the "system" for accessing higher care outside of hospital is typically ridiculous and I felt upset and frustrated by that but it's no worse for us than everyone else. Their assessment is that she needs pretty constant supervision and support and prompting to eat and drink and to do things in general - much more intensive than before but do-able I think. Over the next week after discharge David and Greig will be around and Louis will be back and Doug and I will be here so we'll make a start and see how it goes.

Just for interest for those of you who haven't gone through the process of accessing Aged Care in Australia: first we have to complete a Centrelink Income and Assets form ( more like a book) which I have been trying to do for Mum since Darwin and keep giving up on! At the same time you need ACAT assessment. We are going to apply for this to happen "urgently" in the community - in practice urgent equals at least a 3 week wait. Then (and only then i.e. once both assessment and CAT are completed) we have to interview with and apply to a minimum of 5 nursing homes who will then wait list us as they assess our need and priority....! The only other approach is to go for a fully privately funded bed for which we need $350 000 up front and then something like $80 a day from then on at a minimum. Plus they told me the private homes tend to be awful!

The only silver lining in the process is that the assessment is federally funded and counts nationally so we can still look at homes in Darwin, Natimuk or Melbourne if we want to and she is fit to travel. I do tend to think that aged care is better in rural and regional areas - not so much pressure on resources and often very skilled and caring staff.

Anyway hopefully we will manage at home again for a bit and the way things go with Helen and us I imagine things will change a lot over the next 3 weeks so everything will be different...